Family Reform in Socialist States: The Hidden Agenda

Abstract

Despite the Communist Manifesto's call for the 'abolition' of the bourgeois family, and the association, in the eyes of its enemies, of communism with anti-family policies, the family is regarded by existing socialist states as an institution of vital importance.2 It is not only constitutionally entitled to the support and protection of the state, but it has also been an important site of state intervention. This has been the case both in the more developed industrial societies of the USSR and Eastern Europe and in the poorer states of the socialist third world such as Cuba, South Yemen, Vietnam, China and Mozambique. All these countries are notable for the fact that they have passed legislation aimed at redefining family relations, especially those between men and women, and parents and children. Their constitutions, embodying the policies of the ruling party, grant a special status to the family, designating it a 'basic cell of society', and charging it with a number of specified social responsibilities. At the same time, since most socialist governments have inherited laws which embodied substantial discrimination against women, steps are quickly taken to rectify this, first by granting formal legal equality between the sexes in their constitutions and then by enshrining this principle within newly drafted Family Codes. As can be seen by comparing the family laws of, say, China (1950 and 1980), North Korea (the DPRK) (1946), South Yemen (1974) and Cuba (1975), these laws have a number of characteristics in common; while they obviously differ in points of detail to the extent that they reflect characteristics of the countries in which they are formulated, they are similar in their provision of formal legal equality between the sexes and in the kind of family they promote.3 They also share a common objective in seeking to erode ideas and practices which are seen as associated with the previous social order, ^rhether this is characterized as feudal, colonial or capitalist. For example, the North Korean family law of 1946 explicitly outlaws a form of prostitution known as the 'Kisaeng-girl keeping system', while South Yemen's 1975 law substantially reduced the bride price (Mahr) in order to end a